


Contortion

by Naddy



Series: Crooked [2]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Guardians of the Galaxy - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Attempted Ethnic Cleansing, Backstory, Canon Typical Violence, Claustrophobia, Gen, Headcanon, How They Met, Kraglin gets to see the sun, M/M, meetings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-11
Updated: 2015-09-22
Packaged: 2018-04-20 06:16:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4776701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naddy/pseuds/Naddy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yondu meets Kraglin miles below the surface, surrounded by unsteady metal and chemical fumes, and enlists the Hraxian's help to take back what belongs to his crew.</p><p>(Or, writing out the adventure Yondu thinks about in Crooked, which brings Kraglin up from the depths and into the light.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Here it is! After teasing that backstory and meeting in Crooked, I finally have decided to write out the whole (mis)adventure here. I've got more than this written, but I'm going to try and stagger posting it. Forgive me if updates come a little slow, I'm moving into my dorm and getting back into the swing of college this coming week.

As a rule, Yondu doesn’t hate thieves. He is one, afterall. All of the Ravagers he commands are also thieves. It brings in good money, it’s fun most of the time, and while it’s not exactly good, honest work, Yondu feels better stealing shit than he would being a mercenary removing colonies or a slaver repurposing those colonists.

What Yondu does hate are thieves that steal from him and his crew. He’s not entirely naive, even if he is new to this whole Captain thing. When your crew aren’t happy and there are grumblings of mutiny, you need to fix that. Sooner rather than later. Which Yondu did, by giving the most disgruntled of his crew a nice, well-paying job. Things were great, credit accounts filled with nice numbers, until a sour faced Xandarian with a chip on his shoulder decided all of those nice numbers looked better in his credit account, and Yondu suddenly had an even more disgruntled crew wondering why he was going to give them nice jobs if he wasn’t going to make sure the ship’s credit terminals were safe. (Although it wasn’t like he planned on that happening.)

It’s safe to say that Yondu hates Mr. Evin T’Zedi and his lying, thieving ass. (Hates him a _lot._ ) Enough to threaten damn near the entire Rodra section until he gets a location. Apparently, Mr. Evin T’Zedi is now hiding on some fancy hoity-doity entirely urban planet named Hrax, on level 462. Yondu made it across the sector in record time. (Has to.) He’s got a restless crew and an itch to kill something. Idiot should have known you can’t hide from a hunter like Yondu, even if you go below bedrock on some fancy-ass advanced planet.

He docks his personal M-Ship at a tourist lined hub on the planet’s dayside, putting the deposit down on indefinite parking, which visibly pleases the hub’s overseer. Unfortunately for his neighbors, Yondu doesn’t really give a shit if he scratches or dents the ships squeezed in on either side of him. He can deal with it, so can they. He keeps the blaster on his belt hidden under his coat as he squeezes into a crowd and follows them, not trying to blend in, but not trying to stick out more than he has to. It’s not easy being big and blue sometimes.

Eventually, the flow of people thins out, and Yondu is standing in a central square, with similar, silver buildings on each side, spiraling and stretching towards the teal-blue sky above them. This whole goddamn planet seems to be coated or painted in silvery metal. Yondu’s only been here for maybe an hour, but already it’s giving him a headache and he has decided he also hates the way it looks, based purely on the art snobs jabbering about how beautiful it is on every corner. It’s shiny and it looks nice, he gets the idea already.

 

There are benches arranged in a circle around some sort of weird, abstract sculpture. A few of the pieces are caught in a field and hover daintily, slowly spinning. At least, Yondu thinks its abstract. It doesn’t look like a ship or a person. It’s way too pointy or angular to be anything organic, really.

Yondu glares at a child on one of the benches eating some sticky sweet and jerks his chin. The kid freezes and then scurries away towards its parents, and Yondu takes control of the bench, fanning his coat out behind him. He squares his shoulders and looks aggressive and off putting enough that no one tries to join him on his bench or ask him if he’d like a map of all the local shops. Good.

He opens the map on his wristpiece and cups his hand around the screen to ward off the glare from the polished buildings.. Halfway through his reign of terror through the Rodra, he found the smuggler who brought Evin to Hrax and hid him underground through another smuggler. Apparently, getting to the underground legally here required a shitton of paperwork and passes, and Yondu really just doesn’t have the patience for that. It was much easier to buy his own passage to the underground through the same smuggler.

He isn’t particularly looking forward to it, but there isn’t much Yondu can do about it now. If this is where the lying ass-end of a bilgesnipe had decided to hole up, then this is  where Yondu was going to gut him.

His wristpiece beeps at him, a message appearing with a location that fixes itself into a nearby shop on his map. Yondu grins, all predator and snaggled teeth, and rises, striding with purpose to meet his smugglers and get this hunt started already.

Of course, there’s an obnoxious bell sound when he enters the shop, but he pretends such a ridiculous sound didn’t herald his arrival. Yondu doesn’t look for his smuggler. (He looks distinct enough, with the blue skin and implant and all. The smuggler can get off his lazy legs and approach first.)

Yondu mills about aimlessly with the other shoppers, looking at the art on display. A few large pieces, lit by bright lights, dominate the center of the room while the outer walls are covered with layer upon layer of shelves containing smaller works. One shiny trinket in particular happens to catch his eye (since he’ll need some sort of souvenir when this is over), and he pauses and pushes his way in to take a closer look.

The bauble is made of some clear glass like substance, catching his eye and drawing it along the smooth curves of its sculpt, from the tip to the base. It depicts some kind of bird-like creature rising out of a bush, rushing up and away in a startled flutter. For a planet with no wildlife left, it was a pretty accurate capture of the moment, surprising Yondu. (He’s seen the moment countless times on his own hunts, but didn’t realize how much he missed feeling it.) He’ll get it when he came back up then, and put it on his ship’s dashboard with the thief’s head. (if he can smuggle that up)

“Mr. Udonta?” A Hraxian with a short goatee and shaved head, wearing clean, white clothing, approaches him. (Finally, about damn time.) Yondu turns to face him, hand on his hip and expression carefully reflecting his annoyance and impatience. The contact swallows nervously, throat bobbing, but motions for Yondu to follow him.

“If you’ll come with me, we can get you on your way now.”

Yondu keeps his face sour to cut down on chit chat, and follows the Hraxian out of the shop and across the plaza. People keep out of their way, and after a few minutes’ walk down the street, he’s being ushered into a much more official, administrative looking building, with white floors and walls. It’s almost a nice change from the silver outside.

There’s no gaudy baubles in this building, just ergonomic desks with workers manipulating screens and numbers. They watch him from behind their desks, stealing glances when they think he isn’t paying enough attention to notice. They look curious, but not overwhelmingly so. (Probably not, if this was a semi regular occurance.)

The Hraxian man leads Yondu to an elevator at the end of a short, windowless hallway. After what seems like a strangely complicated unlock sequence involving all manner of biometrics, from retinal to saliva, the door slides open, and the man pulls Yondu in with him, before punching a code into a keypad.  The door wooshes shut and his stomach drops, alerting Yondu that they are moving down very quickly. (Was this thing taking them all the way down? Make his life a helluva lot easier.) And after maybe two minutes, he led out of the metal lift and into a large open space, filled with green plants and lit by artificial lights.

Yondu is almost immediately doused by misted water. His senses tingle and he feels the growth and green of the plants within him, pulsing slowly. It’s very weak compared to a real  natural space, and nowhere near as strong as home (nothing ever will be) but it is reassuring, grounding even, to feel the tug of life after standing in an entirely non-organic city for a few hours.

On the wall to his left, his smuggler removes a steel panel from one of the large pipes lining the wall.

“This hydro-pipe doesn’t carry water anymore. Follow it down until you get to the service hatch at the bottom. The hatch needs a code to unlock, which I will happily ping to you when you transfer the second half of the payment.”

“Ease up now,” Yondu growls, “I recall that being the payment you get if I get back up safely.”

“The code doesn’t change, but there’s no guarantee you’ll get back up alive, which is why I’d really like it now. The code won’t change and the hydro pipe will be open, I swear.”

Yondu narrows his eyes even further. “I’ll give you another 25%, and then I’ll /think/ about you getting the last quarter /when/ I get my blue ass back on the surface, got it? Now ping me the damn security code.” The Hraxian doesn’t argue this time, and immediately sends him the file while he glares.

“Pleasure doing business with ya. Any of the info I got from you is bad, and I’ll be right back up to /inform/ you as such, got it?”

“Yes, Mr. Udonta. Safe travels,” the Hraxian practically stammers, (the spineless idiot) and gets the panel ready to re-secure, apparently overwhelmed by the day’s intimidation. Little shit needs to grow a backbone.

With more than one growled cuss, Yondu manages to squeeze himself into the hydro-pipe and onto the narrow metal ladder within it. The Hraxian puts the panel back on, and he finds himself surrounded by darkness. The air was completely still, dead from lack of movement, and his shoulders brush the slimey sides. For the briefest of moments, Yondu’s throat feels tight, the pipe feels even tighter, and he wonders if it’s a good idea for him to be doing this and he closes his eyes. He sees open land and open forest, then suddenly himself, all squished into a pipe barely wider than he is, miles beneath the surface of a planet that had no natural life left, just pavement and metal, all dead and airless.

Then he cusses himself out for his own cowardice, because he is Yondu Udonta, fucking captain of the Ravagers, damn it all, flicks on his wristpiece’s light to illuminate the industrial orange walls of the hydro pipe, and begins to shuffle down the ladder.

If he is moving maybe a bit slower than he could be, Yondu blames it on the slimy water residue left within the pipe, making the ladder and every other smooth surface slick. It takes him what feels like hours of climbing until he reaches what must be the bottom of the shaft. His legs are sore and burning from the constant bend and push, and he first stops to stand and stretch on top of the service hatch that is going to drop him out of the pipe and hopefully somewhere near level 462 and a dirty thief.

With popping joints, Yondu kneels down and enters the code. The lock whirs, and then the hatch swings open and Yondu drops down, landing on a steel grate maybe two meters below the tangle dup pipes. He looks up and watches as the hatch re-seals itself into the orange metal of the pipe. After making a very clear mental picture of which one it is, (as if he could forget his lifeline) Yondu turns to examine his new surroundings. He’s standing on a narrow metal platform made of steel grating, in a very small and narrow room, some kind of utility access. There’s a single door cut into the stone wall, which he takes for his exit.

After the door, Yondu is in a very jagged, angular passageway with sharp twists and turns. In places, the walls are rough stone, in others, they are rusty, ungalvanized metal. At the end of the passage is an even rustier door, which takes a few kicks and shoves to pry open, hinges screaming his passage.

His throat and eyes burn almost instantly as he finds himself on the floor of a factory or some shit. Yondu doesn’t linger long enough to find out exactly what he’s stumbled into, pulling his coat up over his mouth and nose, and barely looks at the giant, steaming vats of chemicals on either side, lit by the harsh white lights suspended from a gridded ceiling above them. There’s a small orange light over a door at the end of this space, and Yondu assumes these people are smart enough to mark exits. (He's been wrong about that before.) He rushes through it and the next short hallway, and pushes his way out into -

****  
  


Well, not fresh air exactly. But it’s a lot more open, and big enough that he feels a slight current of air instead of stagnant deadness. The air in this next space is also much cleaner, not making his skin itch and eyes burn.  He can see a lot farther into the distance, and this chamber is fairly large, maybe even larger than his ship, but with rough grey-brown stone for walls instead of metal. The ceiling is a little close for his comfort, low enough for Yondu to reach up and lay his palm flat on the laser blasted bedrock over his head. (There’s a good chance if his frill was still there, it would be scraping the sensitive membrane and frills.) The floor underneath is metal, but not space metal, tempered and cut with rare minerals for extreme durability. It doesn’t have the tell tale echo when he kicks it and the reverb isn’t right, but it feels solid enough. Yondu doesn’t know much more about metal than that.

This must be some sort of market or industrial space. Assuming the boxy, closed-off space behind him is a factory, there are at least eight more he can see scattered around. In all the little spaces in between, there are corrugated sheet metal market stalls, some small enough to have only one person behind the counter, some large enough for five or six. They appear to be selling everything from cooked meat of some sort to rocks, to a fungus that Yondu guesses must be some kind of mild hallucinogenic, from the wide-eyed stare of the vendor manning that particular stand. (Of course, the stare might also be because the guy has never seen blue folk before.)

The stalls serve another purpose, whether intentional or not. They form small lanes and thoroughfares, filled with a surprisingly large amount of people milling about, giving him a direction to go, a line to follow. He’s got no map for the floors down here, and the only direction he knows to go is down.

Some of the Hraxians around him stare, hungry and predatory. Yondu doesn’t drop his guard, and sure as hell keeps a mean look on his face. No one tries to sell him shit as he passes, and no one accidentally bumps into him and lifts his wallet. (They wouldn't get far if they did, not without his arrow in their backs.) Others, mostly the older ones, don’t look like they really give two shits about him. He can see it in their faces. They’ve seen enough to know not to bother the odd ones.

There aren't as many people standing about as he nears the wall on the far side, with the factories just small metal boxes in the distance behind him now. Yondu lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding and feels some of the tension drain away now that he’s not packed away in close quarters with bodies on every side. The air isn’t so dead here anymore, not with the large fans set on the walls stirring things up, making an artificial breeze, but it still feels wrong. Lifeless. Stale. He ignores the niches carved into the wall, ignores the people he sees sleeping or sitting inside. People gotta rest somewhere, and as long as they ain’t bothering him, Yondu doesn’t care where they are. He starts searching for a way down from this level.

Luck is with him for once, because he hasn’t walked far along the rough stone wall when he finds a caged ladder descending to the floor below them. Or maybe luck isn’t with him, because Yondu swears and almost kills the nearest bystander when he sees the number stenciled beside it in faded white paint.

39.

He’s got a long fucking way to go. _Fucking thieves._

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yondu sleeps and then runs. A lot.

The floors get less orderly and clean as Yondu moves down. His headache is still there, throbbing painfully in his skull, making him feel the bone is too tight around his brain. The bright glaring shafts of sunlight from topside have been replaced by buzzing, flickering yellow lights and a constant metallic chemical smell. It sits heavy in his lungs, and now, even after hours of breathing it in, he hasn’t gotten used to it. It’s still there in each breath, rubbing Yondu’s throat wrong and raw.

When his wristpiece’s chronometer finally beeps a sleep cycle suggestion for him, Yondu is on Level 79. His headache has only increased, the floors are getting dirtier with rust and what looks like rust but probably isn’t, smears of grease, and fungus. It’s getting hotter too. (Which he wouldn’t mind so much, but this protective coat is also a very hot coat.) More and more of the fans he passes on the walls are either too slow to do any good or just plain broken, their blades bent out of shape or removed entirely. The lights are yellower, dimmer, and flicker more. Yondu’s mood is plunging even faster than his depth within the planet. And unlike his depth, which started at a nice sea level 0, his mood began at -20.

The ceilings are just as low, but a lot of the rock has been replaced with hastily riveted, uneven metal, meaning any noise echoes and bounces and makes his headache feel even more fucking dandy. The people look skinnier and just a bit more haggard than they did forty floors ago, but Yondu doesn’t say that to their faces. For now, only the bravest drug dealers and prostitutes have tried speaking to him, but they’ve all received the same cold silence. He’s seen one or two children, but they quickly sprint out of his sight and into the shadowed spaces around them. Surprisingly, fewer sets of eyes watch him now as he goes through the narrow lanes of ramshackle shelters and shops and whatever else they’ve built down here between girders and support columns. It doesn’t feel like freedom from their attention, but apathy. Things are bad enough that they just don’t give a shit about Yondu, no matter how blue or exotic he is.

After climbing so many ladders, his legs and back are screaming at him, and Yondu is exhausted, even if he is loathe to admit it when there’s still hundreds of floors between him and his quarry. (And that’s a thought that makes him groan and slam a fist against metal.) He finds a quiet end of the floor, away from most of the metallic echoes and shifting metal groans, and picks out one of those hollowed out niches for himself. Yondu still isn’t stupid and he isn’t prepared to just sleep in a random hole in the rock, however. He kicks aside some of the trash in his little cubby towards the opening, where someone would step on it, and wedges a piece of thin, corrugated metal across the opening as well. He’s a light sleeper, and by the time someone moves the impromptu covering and steps on the trash, he’ll be more than awake enough to gut them.

There’s no bedroll or anything soft for Yondu to sleep on in here (not that he probably could have squeezed it down the hydro pipe anyways) but there is a flat, raised rock, covered in some kind of moss or lichen or whatever. It smells dank and musty, as moss is wont to. He sniffs it and waits. No extra burning in his throat, no blood coming out of his nose. Yondu then gives it a very tiny lick. There’s no burning his his mouth and his tongue doesn’t go numb, so he supposes the moss will be an alright bed for the night.

He lays himself out atop it, feeling a quiet, familiar buzz from the green growth beneath him. It’s even weaker than the hydroponics plants, and it’s not connected to anything else, but sharing the floor with some natural life is enough for Yondu to distract himself from the closeness of the rock pocket around him and fall into a light, frustrated sleep.

His wristpiece beeps a quiet but insistent alarm at him a few hours later. His headache has waned slightly, like a tide pulling away from a shore, but he has no doubt that just like that tide, it’ll rush back in to cripple his thoughts in a few hours. Yondu rises and stretches above his cushy moss bed, popping his joints and shoulders, tasting the fuzz of sleep in his mouth, then reaches for the canteen at his belt-

_which is missing._ The entire belt is gone, cut off during his brief period of rest if the short nicks on his jacket are anything to go by. He swears and cusses every single impolite or rude word he knows, and a few that he doesn’t know the exact translation for, because fucking thieves. Of all the things Yondu didn’t have time for on this not-so-simple-anymore-hunt, this might top the list.

His canteen is gone. The yaka arrow is gone. His blaster and the spare plasma charges are gone. The pack with his rations that he keeps under his coat his still there, so Yondu thanks whatever deity owns this planet for that small mercy. (Although for some reason he doubts the people down here have a deity.)

He ignores the way his heart hammers and his stomach twists because his yaka arrow is gone, it could be anywhere on or under the planet right now and he might not get another, because it's all gone-

A deep breath and growl steady his heart and focus Yondu on the new task at hand. Whatever little shit stole his arrow had better be fucking enjoying their last few hours. Little exhaust dripping probably didn’t even realize what the implant on his head was for, the type of psionic enhancements it gave him, the link to his arrow most of all. As long as he stayed calm and kept his mind on the thread connecting him to his weapon, he’d be finding and gutting the little thief in no time.

No matter what his brain says, he is _not_ impressed that the thief managed to slip in and get his stuff. He’s not embarrassed neither. The only emotions Yondu has room for right now are angry and pissed off. Now he has to waste his time on two hunts, one each for his thief and his arrow. Since he needs the latter to skewer the former, the arrow takes priority. With a short kick, he dislodges the metal from the door and stomps back out into the open space of the floor, feeling out the thread between him and his yaka arrow. He feels a pull in his chest and head, tugging him towards the arrow, and stalks that way, not quite rushing yet.

It’s not a perfect tracking system by any means. Yondu only has the general direction, the tug of which way the arrow is in relation to him. In a forest or open prairie, that’s fine. Hell, in a large ship, where the corridors and connections fucking make sense, it’s fine. In a ramshackle collection of floors, with no clear direction on how to move left or right or up or down, it gets to be a problem. He loses track of how many ladders he climbs and descends, and for one terrifying hour is unable to find which floor he’s even on.

What’s even more frustrating is that these layers aren’t contiguous and Yondu spends an incredibly frustrating amount of time backtracking.

Most floors follow a general layout, although that layout is getting more and more warped the deeper he goes. As long as he can keep finding ladders and feel the tug of his arrow, he’s not worried. Yondu makes it to Level 84 when he finds out that this particular pocket of Level 84, apparently known to locals as 84C, doesn’t have any means to keep going down, and he has to climb all the way back up to 79 and take a different set of chutes and ladders to make it to 84A, which does have one narrow ladder that continues into the depths below. This happens six more times. (Whoever they had doing architecture and civil planning for this needs to be shot, right after he deals with this arrow thief.)

It’s here, suspended on pockmarked, paint chipped ladders in an endless void of creaking metal and putrid gusts of air that Yondu really starts to let himself imagine what he’s first going to do to this yaka thief, and then to the ship thief. Honestly, he should probably dispatch the yaka thief quickly; he doesn’t have that much time to spare, not if he’s going to be doing all this backtracking. Impaling them on Yondu’s arrow would only serve them right. But if he’s really going to be honest, he’s coiled tighter than a heating coil on a tundra planet. Going through with a nice, violent hunt might actually soothe his nerves, restore some confidence in himself. He’s still grinning at thoughts of viscera and bodily fluids when he reaches the bottom of this ladder and finds it sealed from the next by a thick, messily sealed and welded sheet of metal. Yondu growls and swears and stomps on it until his leg is sore and his foot is numb. Then, he begins climbing back up the ladder.

Yondu spends most of the next few hours making some progress, going down, then up into a new section of floor, then down another chain of ladders before he finally, finally, gets to a section where he thinks the arrow feels close (and this time, not separated from him with a six foot layer of steel).. He can’t quite tell if it’s through a wall close or just around a corner close, because that damn headache is making, more like a migraine now, almost hurting as bad as it did when he upgraded from an organic frill to implanted psionic boosters for his arrow. The pain doesn’t detract from his goal. If anything, it gives Yondu something to bite into, to keep spurring him forward.

He shifts from stomping to stalking long before he thinks he’s close enough for his quarry to hear him. Carefully, Yondu picks his way around corners and down a flight of service stairs, into a narrow passage lit by surprisingly bright, harsh lights, completely boxed in by metal. He’s not sure what this is. It feels like the service hatch he dropped out of, with lots of exposed plumbing and wiring. There are a few metal shipping boxes, empty and unused, scattered down the length of the corridor, which he uses to hide his approach.

Moving as quickly as he is able to while maintaining quiet on the echoing metal floor, Yondu dashes to the next box and peers over the lid at the figure ahead, sitting in the middle of a three way intersection. There’s a camp stove, made of a simple gas canister and burner set on the ground, providing a meager fire. He makes out the shape of his yaka arrow, being held above the small blue flames, grey lumps of meat skewered along its length, long before he takes in the shape of the skinny bastard holding it.

The skinny bastard is so intent on cooking his dinner (on his yaka arrow no less, like it’s some cooking skewer!) that he doesn’t hear his approach until Yondu is almost directly behind him. Yondu clenches and unclenches his hands and then rushes forward in a mighty lunge, coming down on the back of the yaka thief.

The span of five seconds, a few things happen.

First, the yaka thief crumples, the sudden addition of Yondu’s weight driving him to the ground, pinning him there. The thief knocks his face against the camping stove on the way down, knocking the entire ensemble over (and hopefully burning his face.) The implements go spinning and rolling away, flames extinguished, and his yaka arrow hits the ground a short distance away, launched from the thief’s hand.

Almost immediately, the yaka thief realizes he’s under attack and starts trying to thrash and twist around, putting a hand on his belt for a knife. It’s a little too late for that though. Yondu takes his eyes off his arrow and knots one hand in the yaka thief’s greasy hair and grabs his chin in the other and twists, quickly and with plenty of muscle strength behind it.

The sound of snapping vertebrae echoes off the metal walls and the struggles underneath him cease.

Which is when a dark blur drops in from the left-hand passageway, scooping up the yaka arrow and sprinting into the right-hand passage. Yondu barely even gets a chance to look at this new thief, rising off the body of the old one and snarling.

“You have got to be shitting me!”

He takes off down the corridor after the new thief, who is thankfully still in sight. Somehow, this one looks even lankier and more disproportioned than the last one. But damn, he’s fast. But Yondu is also fast, and spent a lot of his time hunting things with far more teeth and claws than this thief.

And suddenly, this hunt feels good. This chase shifts from an annoyance to catharsis as Yondu realizes it feels _good_ , it feels familiar and comfortable and he can handle this. With one whistle, he could turn the arrow back on the thief and drive it through his stomach and chest and end this, but he doesn’t want to do that. The chase has already begun and he wants to finish it, end it like he used to, with his quarry in his hands, his sides heaving for breath, and the taste of victory on his tongue. He’s going to run this thief down hard.

The unfamiliar territory does make things a bit trickier, as the thief has the upperhand in navigation where Yondu’s been failing. Yondu follows him out of the maze of service passages into the open floor once more, where the thief ducks behind shops and leaps over stalls to try and break the trail or slow Yondu down, but Yondu’s having none of it. He crashes through stalls and overturns boxes and tables and even shoves people out of his way when he has to.

At one point, the thief makes it to a collection of pipes that cut down from a floor above them, through an octagonal opening in the floor, then further downwards for who knows how far. Without missing a beat, the thief jumps at one, hooking an arm and leg around it and sliding down, riding the pipe into the void below. Yondu moves to do likewise, but the first pipe he grabs is too hot and he nearly loses a layer of skin off his fingers. The second pipe he grabs is chilly, but not overtly, and he mirrors the thief’s stance, wrapping two limbs around the pipe, and begins to slide into the unknown, heart hammering from running and maybe something else as he’s surrounded by darkness. The octagon of light shrinks above him rapidly as he slides further into the unknown.

Yondu’s ride isn’t as smooth as the thief, occasionally stuttering and catching against the pipe, but he stays close enough to hear when the thief jumps off his pipe and into the darkness, landing on a platform of metal that rings when his boots hit it. Yondu closes his eyes (not like he was seeing much in the darkness anyways), waits to slide to the spot he heard and feel the arrow moving horizontally away from him, before holding his breath and also jumping.

If he wasn’t filled with adrenaline and other endorphins form the hunt, this leap of faith, into the darkness in a place he doesn’t know, would be the single most terrifying thing he’s done yet. As it stands, he still feels like he’s left his stomach somewhere behind him when he leaps and for a few terrifying seconds, all he feels is air around his body, (he doesn't think about what else is underneath him if its not a metal walkway), before his boots also hit metal, and he races forwards after the frantic footsteps moving away from him.

They must be in some old service passages again, because Yondu rounds a bend and finds himself dumped into a narrow, steel corridor lit by faded yellow running lights inlaid into the floor. It’s not much light, but it's enough to see the figure ahead of him, yaka arrow still in hand. Yondu whistles, not activating it enough to burn or twist, but just enough for the arrow to glow and provide him with a clearer idea of where the thief is in the passage’s yellow half-light.

He puts on a burst of speed while they’re still in a straightaway, legs burning as much as his lungs are now, to close the gap and somehow manages to get close to the thief. Yondu leaps forward and grabs a handful of the thief’s shirt collar, digging his blunt fingers into the sweaty leather, and has just barely started tugging back when the thief twists his head and shoulders, stumbling, and snarls at him, showing and snapping painfully sharp and angular, snaggled teeth towards his blue fingers. The yellow light glints off the uneven edges, highlighting how razor sharp they look. 

It’s a knee jerk reaction for anything with more brains than a salamander, and Yondu releases the shirt collar, yanking his hand back towards himself, out of harm’s way. The thief recovers his rhythm, and sprints away, putting more distance between them now. He ducks and dives around the next corner, Yondu growling in pursuit.

And damn, he was gonna make this a fair hunt, with plenty of chances for the thief to respond as quarry ought to, but Yondu rounds the next corner after him and sees the thief making for another tangled mass of pipes. It’s been a pretty fair chase, it really has, but Yondu isn’t eager for another pitch-black pipe slide and so he slides to a stop and takes a deep breath, releasing it in a sharp, dancing whistle.

Immediately, his arrow comes to life and the thief yelps and releases it as it lights up with a rosy glow, probably burning his hand and shedding the bits of skewered meat to the floor. Only serves him right, as his own hand is still sore from grabbing the hot pipe. Another whistle, another set of notes, and the arrow swoops around, darting around the thief’s running figure before shooting in, snagging itself under the hemlines on the shoulders of his leathers, and pinning him to the metal wall. Yondu trots ahead to where he’s pinned against the wall, taking smug satisfaction from the swearing and cursing as his quarry tries to twist out of his clothes and get away. Once the master of the chase, _always_ a master of the chase.

He stops a few feet in front of the thief (out of the range of anything bladed and deadly) to bend over, hands on his knees, and catch his breath. Damn. He’s not out of shape, but that was quite the run. He’s _not_ gonna say it, but Yondu actually is more than a little impressed with this kid. Yondu grins, showing gold and ivory teeth in a half crazy half adrenaline drunk display, and studies the thief’s face. There's dark fuzz growing on his cheeks and the top of his head, so this maybe is less of a kid and more of a man. His mouth his parted where he's sucking in air, and Yondu can see the tips of those sharp, threatening teeth. The Hraxian’s chest is heaving, clearly also exhausted, but he’s keeping his face pretty well schooled, even though this must be a terrifying experience. Good. Kid’s also got balls then. The thief stops squirming and watches him back carefully, eyes glued to his blue face, darting up to look him in the eye defiantly, _challengingly_. Yondu can respect that. 

“Well, kid. What have you got to say for yourself, taking something that wasn’t yours?” The Hraxian doesn’t answer, not that Yondu really expected him to. It’s not like they’ve been building a rapport of trust. “Right. You don’t want to talk. I get that. Ain’t like we’re friends or nothin’ after that cute little chase. I followed you for my arrow, and I got that now. Only reason I put it through your nice leather shirt and not your throat is because I think you might be able to help me get some business done.” Yondu pauses to let that sink in.

“So. You can answer my questions and we can get on with this, or I can end this discussion with a whistle instead. Your choice.”

The Hraxian swallows nervously, eyes flicking from the arrow in his clothing to Yondu’s teeth, throat bobbing and working over the words he hesitantly spits next.

“Wasn’t yours.”

“Excuse me?”

“It was the other guy’s. The one you killed. Then it hit the ground, it was nobody’s cuz you killed him and he was dead, and then it was mine.”

“Right. Let me clear something up for you then. The arrow’s mine, was mine before, was mine when it hit the ground, and will always be mine. Any other opinions are wrong.” Yondu says it angrily, firmly, leaving no room for doubt. The Hraxian’s lips tighten and he nods.

“Now. I’m gonna forgive you for that one because judging by how stick-skinny that ass of yours is, I’m guessing you was more interested in the meat than the arrow itself. That right?” Again, the Hraxian just nods. Good. He’s learning.

“You got a name?”

“Kraglin.”

“Right, Kraglin. Now, what was most impressive to me back there was all that running and ducking and weaving shit. ‘Specially that bit with the pipes and jumping. You know your way around here pretty well? Know where that last idiot put the rest of my stuff or how to get further down, maybe to level 462 or so?”

“Suppose so.” Another nod. “I wouldn’t waste the time looking for the rest of your stuff though. The one you killed was a junker. Steals shit and sells it for food and another hit. If you had anything worth something, it’s long gone. Only reason he had that arrow yet musta been because he didn’t know what it was.”

“Good. And you know how to climb down to more levels?”

“‘Course I do. You take me for a nipper or something?” The thi- Kraglin almost seems insulted by the insinuation.

“Just checking. Congrats.” Yondu whistles, pulling the arrow out of the metal with a rusty shriek. Kraglin’s shoulders relax and he rubs the new hole in his leathers, watching Yondu cautiously.

“You’re my new tour guide for this shithole.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, comment if you see anything incorrect or out of place or want to talk, leave kudos if you like it or are really eager for the next chapter, and bookmark it if it tickles your fancy. Whatever floats your boat!
> 
> Any encouragement is welcome as I work on an application for a study-abroad to Japan and this Civil War paper.

**Author's Note:**

> I actually wrote this chapter in past tense, then realized I wanted in in present and went back to change it, while also attempting a half stream of consciousness. If there are any glaring errors, please let me know with a comment. You can also comment if you like it. I don't mind, whatever works for you.


End file.
